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My beefs with Dan are chiefly: He can call a good game but only does so when it fits his mood apparently. Maybe the perfect guy for this group of Gen Z slackers. Worse, he gaslits. Big time. Almost comically. Maybe why Dudacek likes him. "Buffalo now down 5-1. And here they go again looking for another one to get right back in it!" See also: going from 3-0 down to 3-1 is not cutting a lead in half.

I don’t see him getting by Verbeek and Anaheim. He is the exact type of player Verbeek wants. Lindstrom is most likely a winger at the NHL level.

The former Effectively how I see it Thompson, Tuch and Cozens are reasonably untouchable Quinn, Peterka, and Benson are only available in specific circumstances Danault 30, Pts last season 47, Hits 80, BLK 60, D Zone starts 52.7%, Face off % 51.9, contract 3x5.5mil ATOI 18:01 51.6 xGF, 38.1 xGA 2.4 Corsi rel, 3.9 FF% rel Flyers Top 5 Faceoff Couturier 31, Pts last season 38, Hits 59, BLK 41, D Zone Starts 43%, Face off % 53.5, contract 6x7.75mil ATOI 17:49 45.9 xGF, 39.4 xGA 10.3 Corsi rel, 8.6 FF% rel (Almost 1300 FOs taken) Laughton 30, Pts last season 39, Hits 155, BLK 56, D Zone starts 53.8%, Face offs 48.9%, contract 2x3mil ATOI 15:39 41.4 xGF, 43.7 xGA -8.2 Corsi rel, -8.2 FF% rel (Just below 1000 FOs taken) Poehling 25, Pts last season 28, Hits 62, BLK 101, D Zone starts 59.7%, Face offs 49.1%, contract 2x1.9mil ATOI 15:00 41.8 xGF, 33.1 xGA -8.9 Corsi rel, -7.0 FF% rel (A little over 950 FOs taken) Frost 25, Pts last season 41, Hits 57, BLK 55, D Zone starts 26.0%, Face offs 49.5%, contract 1x2.1mil RFA at season's end ATOI 15:50 45.1 xGF, 31.5 xGA 9.8 Corsi rel, 9.5 FF% rel (A little over 800 FOs taken) Cates 25, Pts last season 18, Hits 52, BLK 35, D Zone starts 54.8%, Face off % 44.5, contract 1x2.625mil RFA at season's end ATOI 13:48 31.3 xGF, 21.8 xGA -1.1 Corsi rel, 1.6 FF% rel (A little over 300 FOs taken)

Skinner and Tuch are not top liners on any of these playoff teams so something needs to change here imo. There are a few scenarios you could do here and the first would be buyout Skinner as he's making way too much for what he does and brings to this team but I'm not sure with what's going on with the Pegula's if that a realistic option right now but it could really help us in the long run plus it would free up the money to sign a top tier winger if we brought 1 over in a trade. The next would be to trade Tuch and pick 11 for a top winger prospect, this 1 I wouldn't love so much and as annoyed as I was with his play last year I still feel we need a presence like him just not on the top line. My 3rd option would be to deal J.J. Peterka and pick 11 for a top tier winger. This could come back to bite us if he turns into a solid top 6 player but there is still no telling if thats true and the guy we're trading for his contract is probably much higher which is another thing you have to take into consideration moving forward.

NHL hockey is too fast for him and Dunleavy cannot keep up with the play. You can get away with that on a TV broadcast but not on the radio, where the audience is dependent on the PBP announcer to paint the image for them. Listeners should be able to follow the puck up and down the ice, but Dunleavy leaves huge gaps in the action making that difficult. The broadcast crew serves the TV audience first and I get that, but it would be nice to have a dedicated radio broadcast team as well.

I think DD is terrible at PBP. He gives us no sense of puck position. He doesn’t consistently say who has the puck and where. He is late to the action. In other words, he barely does the job. I have ESPN+ so I can listen to other teams broadcasts. Dan is less than mediocre. We should expect more given the rich broadcasting and PBP history of the franchise.

I like Dan. He’s better than mediocre. I don’t know how much out of market hockey people watch here, but I watch a lot. There are only a handful of broadcast teams around the league that I think are better.

That’s why I’ve got you on follow 😘

Only some of them. Enjoy mediocrity.

That said, "widespread praise" is a weird conclusion to draw. And the one area where he must improve is calling goals. We cannot have a 50-word narrative start when the puck crosses the goal line that ends with words like "... and Tage Thompson has put the Sabres in the lead, 1-0!"

Dan's a solid pro and a good guy. That's fine for me, for now anyway. As others have noted upthread and elsewhere: I just want the team to be good.

Simply awful. Complete distraction from game play. Dopey, to boot.

Why do you hate the fans so much?

When the Sabres are good I'm hoping for a new broadcasting team Right now I don't care

When you say that you have no interest in touching the top 6 players you list, do you mean that you have no interest in trading any of them or do you mean that you actually project them as our top 6? I wouldn’t be thrilled about moving any of them, but would move Quinn, Peterka or Benson in the right deal (a benefit of having those 3 AND Kulich, Rosen, Savoie, Wahlberg, Östlund, Neuchev is that it allows flexibility to trade for a better player). Still, the deal would have to be really good. As a current top 6 though, this group is weak and a lot would need to go right for it to be playoff level. Basically at least 2 of Thompson, Tuch, Cozens will need to return to 22-23 form and at least 2 of the young wingers need to take significant leaps forward. It is possible this will happen, but not something that can be counted on my view.

On brand.

Was hoping Buffalo would go after Danault back when the Sabres were still on Rebuild 2.0. Still would be very happy with landing him, but not sure why LA would be willing to part with him.

When I look at mock drafts and see a 6’3” 215 pound centre who skates like the wind and scored nearly a goal a game -in a draft lacking both power forwards and centres in general - falling out of the top 5 I really raise my eyebrows. The Ducks have McTavish and Carlsson already, so I can see them looking elsewhere. But I just don’t see how Lindstrom gets past Columbus or Montreal. Outside the injury, he’s everything GMs drool over.

I don’t because Corsi and Fenwick tend to be too team dependent. Put a decent player on a good team his possession numbers usually improve, sometimes dramatically. Put the same player on a bad team and his numbers plummet. I also think they are looking for a player to fulfill a certain role. I think the player they want has to add scoring, but also kill penalties and have a physical game. It’s why I listed hits, pk time and d zone %.

I don’t listen to Sabres games on the radio, which seems to be Dan’s biggest criticism. i like the excitement level of his voice in games that call for that. His word play can be cringey at times but his tone is good; he’s got a touch of that old Hockey Night in Canada broadcaster in that he spends most of his time calling the game rather than drifting into anecdotes while the play goes on - at least compared to what I hear on national broadcasts. I think he gets the part about how the sound of his voice needs to convey the rhythms of the game. I liked how he called the explosive squad of 22/23. He’s a pro in the sense that he strikes a very good balance of letting us know he’s for the Sabres without ever feeling like he is pandering to them, or misleading us. He’s a decent foil for Ray; it feels like Rob has accepted him as part of the team now and the needling is more camaraderie than testing. I’m comfortable hanging out with him for 3 hours a couple times a week. I find myself getting annoyed when my feed is the other team’s. I’m looking forward to see what he does with a good team to work with.

If summer never came would people go mad? Because I can kind of feel it in the air, literally. Depression is setting in already. Come on, summer. Let's go. I need to bitch about your sunshine, heat and humidity.

Maybe when the Sabres are decent I will care enough to notice.

A thoughtful and terrific post. Your next bar tab should be on the house. 👍

I would expect a few lists to come out this week as the combine was the last event that scouts and reporters have had to evaluate/interview the candidates. Bob McKenzie’s list is the one I am interested in. With all of the various opinions so far, I think there will be a lot of surprises. Some guys will fall 5 spots while others will rise that much. For every list that has Lindstrom at 3 there is one where he is 12.

At first I didn't like him, but Dunleavy has grown on me. I enjoy his banter with Ray. I loved RJ (and Ted Darling), but at the end of his tenure, RJ would sometimes go 2-3 minutes without giving the score, which was frustrating when listening on the radio. Yes, you can tell my generation by the fact that I listen to AM radio in the car.